Ravi Shankar Prasad inaugurates Electropreneur Park at DU

Minister says 37 mobile phone manufacturing units have been set up in India in last one year

Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Saturday that 37 mobile phone manufacturing units had been set up in the country in last one year.

The new units have manufactured around 11 crore mobiles and generated employment for 37,000 people.

Prasad was speaking at an event to launch Electropreneur Park—an incubation centre for electronics start-ups. The centre at the South Campus of Delhi university aims to incubate 50 early stage start-ups and create at least 5 global companies over a period of 5 years.

The incubation centre has been set up through a consortium of government, academia and industry, represented by Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Delhi University (DU) and Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA).

The government has been laying special emphasis on electronics manufacturing in the country under its "Make in India" programme. The Ministry of Electronics and IT has announced an electronics development fund of Rs 10,000 crore to promote companies and start-ups in the sector.

"When I became minister, total investment in the electronics sector was Rs 11,000 crore. Now it is 1,23,000 crore", said Prasad.

Electronics manufacturing in the country has remained dull with only a handful of companies choosing to manufacture in India. India imports electronics goods worth Rs 3,50,000 crore. Some of the new units that have come up include that of Foxconn with five facilities, Micromax, Lava, Intex, Videocon, Vivo mobile, Celkon and Flextronics.